The Ethnic Component of Germany's Ostforschung: The Interwar Years and Beyond By

Ute Ferrier

Over the last century issues of ethnicity, citizenship and statehood have often been
at the center of discussions concerning Germany's tumultuous history. Unlike the United
States, Germany bases its citizenship predominantly on the legal principal of jus
sanguinis meaning by right of birth or ancestry. Thus people who have German parents
are automatically granted citizenship no matter where they were born or how long ago
their ancestors left Germany, while immigrants who have resided in Germany for several
generations are still denied this right. Refugees from the former Soviet Union who
can prove German ancestry can gain citizenship immediately, even if their ancestors
emigrated three hundred years ago. Often these immigrants, especially from the Asian
republics, have only retained rudimentary knowledge of the German language and are
ill-prepared to adjust to the highly modernized German society. By contrast, Turkish
immigrants who have been working and paying taxes in Germany since the 1950s, cannot
gain citizenship. Their children and grandchildren were born in Germany, they were
educated in German schools and are often culturally more adjusted to German society
than they are to Turkish society. There are few exceptions to this rule but the process
and financial cost of becoming a citizen has been prohibitive for most.

. The concept of the ethnic nation (Volk) has its administrative roots in the nineteenth
century when German states and municipalities sought to restrict poor relief to their
local residents, thus excluding destitute transients from receiving aid. By the time
the law on citizenship was passed in 1913 the question of "who was a German" had been
heavily influenced by ideology. This law, which still forms the basis for citizenship
in Germany today, not only determined that jus sanguinis be the national criteria
for citizenship, it also extended this right to all ethnic Germans living abroad and
made this right inheritable.

By comparison, the United States and France base their citizenship primarily on the
principle jus soli, meaning that those who are born on the national territory (or
its colonies) can obtain citizenship. In the United States this principle is taken
to its extreme as it grants citizenship even to those who are born within its airspace;
for example a person born on an airplane flying overhead can become a U.S. citizen
on those grounds. Most European states use a combination of jus sanguinis and jus
soli; and in recent years the traditionally liberal state of France has made efforts
to restrict immigration. However, it still grants citizenship to far more applicants
than Germany does.

Some scholars have argued that Germany needs to review its immigration principles,
especially given the fact that Germany has had a negative population growth for several
decades now. Henry Ashby Turner, jr. has stated that Germany's immigration politics
and popular opinion regarding this issue is based on two myths: the myth that immigration
was historically foreign to Germany and the myth of the ethnic nation. Turner calls
for the historical profession to enlighten the public and dissolve the myths. He even
suggests that the terminology in the basic law (Grundgesetz) be changed from the "German
Volk" to the "citizens of the federal republic."

In the past, this view that the nation consists of an ethnically and biologically
closed society has had dramatic consequences, because the argument was partly used
to justify discrimination against Jewish citizens and foreigners. Even today it affects
the way Germany treats its immigrant population, estimated to be around fifteen percent
of the population.

Historically the concept that the Volk rather than citizenry makes up the nation,
strongly influenced politics, foreign policy and academia. The connection between
the historians' guild and foreign policy is particularly evident in Germany's Ostforschung
(Eastern Studies) between World War I and World War II. In this research project I
will ask: how did German-speaking historians deal with ethnicity during the interwar
years and what is the correlation between nationalist ideology, politics and historiography?
To what extent was there a continuity or discontinuity in the scholarship after 1945?

Historiography

As far back as 1871 when Germany was unified as the Second German Empire, the historical
discipline was essentially historicist, it emphasized the politics of great men such
as Bismarck and absolutely accepted the "primacy of foreign policy." This academic
tradition remained until World War I. By war's end many Germans, including most academics,
agonized about the new state of affairs and what was in store for the nation and the
state. The destruction of the war and the consequent political instability undoubtedly
influenced the world view of academics. Politics and historical writings are in this
regard inextricably entangled.

The Weimar Republic (1918-1933) was Germany's first democratic attempt but the fact
that the system had been imposed by the victors made it unpalatable for many. It was
difficult for the German elites to find a tenable cultural orientation for the new
state. Otto Hinze wrote at this time that the Western alternative was that "of the
victorious powers, who condemned us to defenselessness, to political impotence, to
the drudgery of the bare minimum of existence, and thereby also injured our national
and moral dignity at its most sensitive points." Therefore the Western alternative
was "a moral impossibility" for Germans.

Historians for the most part remained conservative and antagonistic toward the new
state, some firmly believed that democracy was a Western concept and consequently
un-German. Thus politically most historians aligned themselves with the enemies of
the republic or were at best "republicans of the head and not of the heart" (Vernunft-republikaner).
According to the conventional view of German scholarship during the Weimar Republic,
the "prevailing approach was some variant of a hyper-individualistic historicism,
characterized by an almost hypnotic and narrow orientation toward Ranke." Much of
the scholarship criticized democracy and the constitution and expressed a strong desire
to "revise" the Treaty of Versailles.

However, as Winfried Schulze points out, this notion that the historical methodology
continued to be historicist is misleading. Although historians were reactionary, they
were also highly disillusioned with the Prussian state and the state-centered historicism.
Because their faith in the state had been shattered, many historians sought new methods
of inquiry. This resulted in a paradigm shift, or rather in a return to an older,
pre-historicist paradigm, the völkische conception of history.

Willi Oberkrome, who studied the methodological innovations and the influence of ideology
in the German historical sciences (Geschichtswissenschaft) from 1918 to 1945, noted
that especially the younger generation of historians moved away from the orthodox
imperative of their older colleagues and based their inquiries primarily on what he
calls transrational-romantic sources. The concept of the nation as a cultural-linguistic
unity had been developed before World War I. Karl Ferdinand Werner, who examined the
Nazi's concept of history (Geschichtsbild) and the historical discipline during the
Third Reich, points out that Hitler did not have to invent the wheel, he could utilize
several of his predecessors. For example, Viktor Hantzsch contributed an article on
German migration to the multi-volume Weltgeschichte (world history) which was published
in 1907. Here Hantzsch identified Germany's task for the twentieth century to unite
Germans of the middle European language region economically and politically and to
instill a sense of national identity in them, so that even if they are not members
of the Reich that they would feel as members of the Fatherland. For Hantzsch such
a feeling of solidarity should eventually develop in Germans across the world and
bring about a Greater Germany that would transcend territorial boundaries.

After the devastating defeat of World War I and the humiliating terms of peace, Germany
intellectuals responded to the crisis in several ways. They tried to make sense of
what had happened and questioned what had gone wrong both internally and externally
that could have made such a collapse possible. For many it was a time of soul searching.
Some ideas that had been vague before the war were now clearly formulated. In 1935,
Karl Alexander von Müller gave the keynote address at the tenth annual conference
of the German academy in Munich. In his speech titled "Problems of the Second Reich
in light of the Third" he noted that Germans became politically and historically aware
before the war but that scholars only faintly apprehended what the purpose of the
state and the future of the nation could be. World War I changed all that because
the defeat was absolute: the entire state collapsed. From that time on questions regarding
the nation or the state could no longer remain ambiguous. They were pressing and needed
clear answers.

During the 1920s the national or völkisch movement gained momentum, because it presented
a seemingly reasonable answer. The concept that Germans are one people no matter where
they live became more widespread and was central to many new institutions. Immediately
following the war numerous organizations were founded which sought to encourage völkisch
movements at home and abroad. One such organization was the German association for
the protection of Germandom in the border regions and abroad (Deutsche Schutzbund
für das Grenz- und Auslandsdeutschtum). Representatives of the association raised
public awareness regarding Germans abroad. They no longer saw these Germans as foreigners
but as fellow citizens who, because of their sacrifices, were entitled to special
privileges from the German state. Implicit in this line of reasoning was the hope
that maybe the borders of Germany could be expanded eastward, which would make up
for some of the land lost with the Versailles Treaty. In the volatile political climate
of the Weimar Republic, Germans tried to evaluate their standing in Europe, deal with
the humiliation of Versailles, and regain some of Germany's former power. Scholars
such as Walter Kuhn and Hermann Aubin argued that the Reich should take a stronger
stance regarding its eastern borders.

This does not mean that there was consensus among academics on what course of action
needed to be taken. Attitudes were rather diffuse. However, many who were attracted
to the völkisch movement tended to have one belief in common: a deep skepticism of
modernity which could flare into open animosity. For these scholars the Germans living
in eastern and southeastern Europe represented an older agrarian tradition which they
considered to be closer to what Germany ought to be. Germans in eastern Europe were
largely unaffected by industrialization and urbanization, thus scholars bestowed upon
them a "higher ethnic dignity" because they lived a lifestyle that was equated to
the Paradise lost.

Scholars interested in German minorities studied their subject from a cultural and
territorial point of view, combining the concept of cultural territory (Kulturboden)
with that of national territory (Volksboden). German superiority lay at the foundation
of these inquiries. Seemingly wherever Germans went they had well functioning established
settlements from the jungles of Brazil to the tundras of the far North. Consequently
if Germans did well in diverse environments, their successes could not be attributed
to geographical location but to hard work, skill and determination.

The German cultural landscape does not result from the interaction of various natural
causes, but is the work of people with definite natural abilities, who change nature
according to their wills.

Scholars of the inter-war years saw this triumph of the will as a key to German success
and they found examples to substantiate this belief from pre-history to the present.
They also believed that Germans had a civilizing mission all over the world but especially
in Eastern Europe. Furthermore, this sense of missionary obligation ought to compel
Germans of all ages, especially the young.

When the young are taught from childhood about the civilizing tasks carried out by
our people, when in their maturity they are informed about the German Kulturboden,
when this is thoroughly studied at the universities, investigated by scholars, and
held aloft by the whole, then a feeling of strength will develop in the nation, which
will not merely be intoxicated with its 'gloire' or by cries of 'Hurra', but anchored
in the soul of the nation.

For scholars it was self-evident that German Kultur had triumphed in eastern and southeastern
Europe, in particular over "primitive Slavdom." It was a small leap to argue that
since land cultivated by Germans, no matter where they lived, was Germanized that
it was consequently part of the German nation.

As cultural commonality was extended to include territory, bringing ethnic Germans
into the national fold became a necessity. Such ambitions, albeit only expressed by
some, would in the end call for aggression. What started out as an intensified interest
in ethnic matters evolved into territorial demands that were entangled with nationalistic
ideals. The association for the advancement of the study of national and cultural
territory (Stiftung für Volks- und Kulturbodenforschung) defined the national territory
as those settlements containing an ethnically homogenous population, which clearly
included large areas of the Czech Republic and Poland. Many academic conferences and
symposiums were financed by the ministry of the interior and they were the foundation
of most grand ethnographic projects of the 1920s and 1930s.

From the early 1920s on ethnic Germans became increasingly important to scholars.
After Versailles there had to be a distinction between the "cultural nation" (Kulturnation)
and the "state-nation" (Staatsnation) and the traditional methodologies were inadequate.
Now that the Staatsnation had been destroyed, territorially confined, financially
penalized and morally held responsible for World War I, there was little solace to
be found there. However, the Kulturnation offered exciting possibilities among them
studying the German nation and its cultural heritage without having to deal with the
state's recent history. Studying Germans abroad meant, however, that new methods had
to be mastered in order to carry out empirical research which was now in a regional
context and had a cultural focus. Consequently ethnography (Volkskunde) and linguistics
were consulted, as was the study of settlements (Siedlungsforschung) and regional
social and economic history.

According to James van Horn Melton, this new "folk history" (Volksgeschichte) had
a similar focus as the early Annales scholarship, albeit it has been given far less
attention. "Like Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre, folk historians were preoccupied with
the study of peasant landholding patterns, demography, kinship, and popular culture."
While their methodologies may have been similar, their politics were certainly not.
Bloch and Febvre opposed fascism, while folk history originated on the far right of
the political spectrum and identified with the pan-German movement that renounced
the Versailles Treaty.

The outspoken conservatism of Volkskundler attracted the National Socialists. During
the 1930s the party generally supported Volksgeschichte, even though the vast majority
did not join the party. Prior to 1933 not one full professor had been a party member,
nonetheless few lost their jobs or resigned because of conflicts of conscience. There
was enough ideological agreement that the Nazis did not feel threatened and allowed
conservative historians to remain. This does not mean that the Nazis were tolerant,
nor that they succeeded in turning the discipline into one of its propaganda machines.

Although much research was state sponsored during the interwar years, historians apparently
were not forced to publish in concert with state ideology. According to Werner the
historical discipline was not coerced or forcibly aligned (Gleichschaltung) but that
various individuals who expressed imperialist or racist views did so out of a conviction
in "extreme ideals." Scholars may not have been compelled to publish works in line
with Nazi ideology but frequently the views they expressed were in turn used by Nazi
functionaries to their own purposes. Historians may not necessarily have been complicit
in Nazi efforts but for the most part historians did not speak out against the regime.
Instead of outward resistance many scholars increasingly kept to themselves and underwent
what has been characterized as an inward exile.

Michael Burleigh agrees that there was little academic resistance to the Nazis but
he articulates this failure in stronger terms. For him the "politicization and instrumentalization
of a scholarly discipline under the Nazi regime" is clearly a deficit of "intellectual
endeavor."

The experts did not challenge existing stereotypes and misconceptions; they worked
within their boundaries and reified them through empirical 'evidence.' Dissident voices
were silenced by authoritarian scholar-managers who policed the politics of their
subordinates without government prompting. Anti-democratic professional structures
served at once to perpetuate misconceptions and to facilitate government control.
The politicians and bureaucrats had the measure of academic power-brokers.

According to Burleigh, academics who were involved in Ostforschung were not a lunatic
fringe but part of the educated élite. Ministers and state secretaries based their
decisions on the expertise of these scholars. For example, Hermann Aubin, one of the
most prominent scholars of the 1930s, was sympathetic to the Nazis. In 1939 he wrote,
"We must make use of our experience, which we have developed over many long years
of effort. Scholarship cannot simply wait until it is called upon, but must make itself
heard." Academics frequently cooperated with the government because they saw it as
a means to legitimize their work. When the relationship between a scholar and the
regime soured it was less because of resistance but rather "the result of political
miscalculation, a naïve unawareness of the priority of ideology over scholarly exactitude
or, more simply, a matter of being outmaneuvered by more practised political operators."

Managers at the SS (Schutzstaffel) recognized that the conquest of Eastern Europe
could be facilitated through research institutes, which not only provided a useable
rhetoric but also supplied statistical and cartographical locations of people. "Deportations,
resettlements, repatriations, and mass murder were not sudden visitations from on
high [...] but the result of the exact, modern, 'scientific' encompassing of persons
with card indexes, card-sorting machines, charts, graphs, maps and diagrams." Ostforschung
thus provided the regime with an ideological excuse and a scientific foundation to
carry out its goals.

Because Ostforschung was used to justify eastward expansion, it was charged as being
the handmaiden of Hitler and after 1945 it had to be rehabilitated. Volksgeschichte,
the most innovative methodological current of the interwar years, had been deeply
discredited for its political complicity and scholars who had been accused of Nazi
affiliation could now hardly be considered cutting edge. As the leadership changed
hands, those who had been least compromised by the Nazis became dominant figures in
the discipline, namely Friedrich Meinecke, Gerhard Ritter, and Hans Rothfels, who
because of their historicist leaning had rejected Volksgeschichte. Once again the
paradigm shift was rather a return to an older paradigm; this time a return to political,
diplomatic and intellectual history. "This paradox helps to explain why, in the short
run at least, the defeat of Germany in 1945 did more to restore the hallowed traditions
of German historicism than it did to revise them." Besides this methodological shift,
the German historical profession remained nonetheless conservative and some have argued
that after the war there was more of a continuation than a discontinuation. For example,
in what became the Federal Republic (West Germany), most historians who held positions
under the Nazis kept their jobs after 1945. Even those twenty-four professors who
were suspended because they had been incriminated were by and large readmitted into
the discipline in the 1950s. On the other hand, the vast majority of those who had
been exiled under the Nazi administration, failed to return after the war.

Although some historians attempted to analyze what had happened, there was no drastic
break, no Stunde Null (hour zero), no slate wiped clean. Several historians publicly
expressed their anguish over what had happened during the war, but as Stefan Berger
noted, "much of the alleged critical stock-taking was little more than a rhetorical
smoke-screen of lament, behind which the same old national apologias, somewhat toned
down in volume, could and did continue. No national vacuum emerged in the immediate
post-war years, neither in historiography nor in the public debate at large." According
to Berger, there was initially no effort made to examine the role historians played
under the National Socialists. Gerhard Ritter, President of the Association of German
Historians founded in 1948, considered "efforts at belated self-accusation or self-justification"
to be superfluous. "Continuity as far as possible, revisionism as far as necessary-that
was the guiding principle of post-war German historians."

One noticeable change did, however, take place. In light of the recent imperialist
disaster, historians could no longer condone a Germanocentric approach. After the
war German historians tried hard to get Germany back into the European fold and scholarship
at that point showed considerable pan-European tendencies. In the late 1950s this
"Europeanization of German history was of crucial importance for the reemergence of
social history." In 1958 the Arbeitskreis für moderne Sozialgeschichte was created
in Heidelberg, which was to play a key role in Germany's postwar social history. The
majority of historians responsible for the Arbeitskreis were linked to the Volksgeschichte
of the interwar years. The term Volksgeschichte was discontinued and instead replaced
by Strukturgeschichte (structural history). The change was more than cosmetic. It
also entailed a marked shift in the attitude toward modernity. The peasants were no
longer romanticized and industrialization was no longer seen as the demise of society.
The Volk was no longer the focus of the inquiry, instead it was replaced by the concept
of the "mature industrial society." This shift also made the transformation from a
Germanocentric view to a philo-European one easier.

Theodor Schieder, who is considered to be one of the towering intellects of the time,
had practiced Volkskunde in the interwar years. After 1945 he adopted a structural
approach to history but remained fundamentally interested in political history. After
World War II, Schieder trained hundreds of students, among them Hans-Ulrich Wehler.
Schieder's approach eventually led the way to "social history of politics" which later
became associated with the Bielefeld school. This historiographical overview demonstrates
a clear connection between politics, ideology and historical paradigms. The political
conditions after World War I, led many historians to move away from historicism to
embrace Volksgeschichte. After World War II, Volksgeschichte had to be adjusted and
during the 1950s historicism again predominated. However, in the 1960s and 1970s many
scholars of the historicist school retired and the discipline moved in the direction
of historical social science. Methodologically this new paradigm was built on the
foundations of Volksgeschichte, even though it was no longer anti-modern and prescribed
to a European rather than a German vision. The paper will now examine how the historical
discipline impacted the way in which the history of the Germans in southeastern Europe
was written.

Regional Context

In southeastern Europe problems surrounding ethnicity and nationalism have been evident
since the concept of the nation-state had become influential in the early nineteenth
century. In this historically multi-ethnic region ethnic relationships were particularly
strained during both world wars, when different ethnic groups which had co-existed
under one administration now fought on opposite sides. Yugoslavia, which became a
state after World War I, was the most complicated of the interwar states because it
contained the largest and most varied number of pre-1918 units.

From the Austrian half of the late Habsburg Empire, Yugoslavia inherited Slovenia
and Dalmatia; from the Hungarian half, the formerly quasi-autonomous subkingdom of
Croatia-Slavonia and the explicitly Hungarian districts of the Vojvodina; and from
the joint Austro-Hungarian administration, the province of Bosnia-Hercegovina. Macedonia
and the Sanjak of Novibazar had been Ottoman imperial territories until the Balkan
Wars of 1912 and 1913. Finally, there also entered into the new Yugoslavia the hitherto
independent kingdoms of Montenegro and Serbia.

Ethnic conflicts were thus latent in the new Yugoslav state and by the eve of World
War II ethnic differences remained unreconciled. Yugoslavia is particularly pertinent
to this study because it contained a sizable German minority, the Danube Swabians
(Donauschwaben) who were almost entirely expelled after World War II. It is particularly
instructive to examine the role Nazi ideology played in the events leading up to expulsion.

The Danube Swabians represent one of several groups who were resettled in Europe during
the twentieth century. It has been estimated that during and after World War II around
thirty million Europeans were forcibly resettled. About half of these were moved at
gun-point by the Nazis and constitute the reorganization of Poland and the Soviet
Union. Massive uprooting of people, however, dates back to the end of World War I
and the collapse of three multi-ethnic empires: the Habsburg Empire, the Russian Empire
and the Ottoman Empire. As new nation-states were created from these empires, minorities
were moved about in order to accommodate new territorial boundaries. Rogers Brubaker
has termed this trend "ethnic unmixing." In the case of the former Austria-Hungary
an estimated seven million Germans instantaneously became minorities in 1919. Of the
one and a half million Danube Swabians who had been administered by the Hungarian
half of the empire, about half a million remained under Hungarian jurisdiction while
half a million each fell to Romania and Yugoslavia. The disintegrating Russian and
Ottoman empires experienced immediate ethnic unmixing; in contrast many Germans of
the former Hungarian Empire remained. Mass migration in southeastern Europe, however,
was merely postponed. It would take place after World War II. When it did, the Danube
Swabians were proportionately the most severely affected.

Most of the scholars who have tried to understand the demise of the Danube Swabians
have focused on the events surrounding the war itself. The Danube Swabians had the
highest civilian casualty rate of any German group and as such are seen as victims
who bore the brunt of retaliation against Germans. The bearing Ostpolitik had on Nazi
policy has generally been documented and the fact that academia was severely discredited
after World War II attests to this fact. Germany's Ostpolitik clearly had an ethnic
component which justified eastward expansion on the grounds that Germans had a civilizing
mission and that the nation's territory must be expanded to encompass German minorities
living in Eastern Europe. However, prior to the 1980s few historians and ethnologist
have questioned how responsible German scholars were in contributing to the rise of
German nationalism abroad, which ultimately had catastrophic consequences for ethnic
Germans in eastern and southeastern Europe. Nazi functionaries frequently used the
work of academics, therefore the way in which issues such as ethnology were treated
in academia was more than a heuristic exercise, more than the shaping of a historiography.
It also had a bearing on historical events because it contributed to people's self-concept
and consequently influenced their actions.

Arguably the way in which scholars studied German enclaves in southeastern Europe
was politically motivated and not necessarily reflective of how these German minorities
viewed themselves in their predominantly multi-ethnic environment. This discrepancy
seems to be the case regarding ethnic identity: while ethnologists and historians
stressed how rooted in the German culture these minorities were, many Germans in southeastern
Europe actually took pride in the fact that they were able to coexist as an integral
part with other cultures.

In the interwar years ethnologists predominantly categorized German groups in southeastern
Europe according to national-linguistic criteria. Their studies focused on continuity
and on how the German language and culture was retained. From this point of view Germans
lived as minorities in German-speaking enclaves in the midst of a foreign environment
henceforth the study came to be known as Sprachinselforschung, which means the study
of linguistic islands.

Walter Kuhn, pioneer in the field, published his book Deutsche Sprachinselforschung
in 1934 and became professor of Volkskunde (ethnology) in Breslau two years later.
Kuhn elaborated on the metaphor of the island by depicting it as being in the midst
of a violent ocean. The foreign nations (Volkstum) represent the ocean which threatens
the existence of these German islands. Furthermore, Kuhn considered these islands
as a territorial extension of the Volksboden or national territory.

Ingeborg Weber-Kellermann, a fellow ethnologist, openly criticized this approach,
as laying the foundation not only for a flawed but dangerous methodology. The view
that Germans in Southeast Europe were separated from the German nation and surrounded
by a foreign Volkstum does not reflect the intercultural exchange that existed. These
Germans shared a common existence with their Serb and Magyar neighbors with whom they
interacted on a daily basis. Serbs often worked on German farms and Germans frequently
sent their children to Magyar schools. All the farmers participated in the country
fairs, where they displayed their farm equipment and their animals. They also met
one another each week at the market. In the town of Szekszárd where the population
was approximately half German and half Magyar, the church service on Sunday would
be held alternately, one week in German and the other week in Magyar.

Sprachinselforschung overemphasized one aspect of culture-language-and consequently
implied that the Germans abroad had greater cultural connection to Germany than the
communities in which they existed. However, the Danube Swabians were not isolated
minority groups whose primary ties were with Germany. On the contrary, they lived
in open and fluid societies in which people did not necessarily group together along
ethnic lines. They also distinguish themselves along religious and occupational lines,
thus the Swabians from the Banat identified as Catholics together with the Bulgarian
and Magyar minorities in distinction to the Orthodox Romanians and Serbs. As farmers
or day laborers they shared similar life experiences and economic interests. The fact
that some of them were German speaking is not sufficient to understand their communal
life or their identity. Danube Swabians did not live as isolated islands. Living next
to one another and with one another was more predominant than living against one another.

This is not to downplay the real tension that existed in the interwar years, when
nationalist sentiments were on the rise across all of Europe. By the time Nazi rhetoric
infiltrated the Balkans, nationalism had become a divisive force in the region. The
Danube Swabians played an important role because they "were not just another minority
in the grip of ethnically different host nations, but organic parts of Germandom,
one of the largest, most respected and feared community of peoples in the western
world."

G. C. Paikert, who served in the Hungarian Ministry of Education in Budapest from
1934-1944, was responsible for the schooling of national minorities during these years.
In his book about the Danube Swabians and Hitler's impact on their patterns, he notes
that up until World War I the host countries seemed to benefit from the Danube Swabians,
who made lasting cultural and economic contributions. "As to their overall record
in their adopted Heimat [homeland], there can be no doubt that until the coming of
the Hitler era the bulk of it was constructive."

In the case of the Danube Swabians in Yugoslavia, they committed two grievous errors:
the had a negative attitude toward the Yugoslav state and they embraced Nazism. The
former came in response to Serb chauvinism and coercive assimilation practices. Prior
to World War I, the Serbs and Germans were both minorities under Hungarian administration.
This relationship, however, drastically changed when the Yugoslav state was formed
and the Germans were suddenly a minority within a Serb-dominated state. In the early
1920s the Swabians suffered several legal setbacks. Their property rights were curtailed,
German schools were nationalized, German political parties outlawed and cultural associations
declared illegal.

These crackdowns by the Serb government served to strengthen cohesion among the Swabians.
The city of Neusatz became the center for Germans of the former southern Hungary.
Here the daily newspaper Deutsches Volksblatt was published and the cultural association,
the Schwäbisch-Deutsche Kulturbund was founded in 1920. The Kulturbund was active
for four years and had 55,000 members in 128 villages in the Vojvodina and Syrmia
before it was declared illegal in 1924. The Germans in the Vojvodina had provided
for the education of their children, which was a common feature among migrant Germans,
but in 1922 all schools were nationalized and the Swabians thus lost control over
the education of their children. The same year Dr. Ludwig Kremling and Dr. Stefan
Kraft founded the Deutsche Partei (German Party) which became illegal by 1929. In
addition to these struggles over minority rights, the region experienced an economic
crisis in the early 1930s. Thus the quality of life deteriorated for many Danube Swabians.

After the German Reich and the Yugoslav government had improved their relations in
the mid 1930s, political conditions improved for the German minority in Yugoslavia.
In 1931 a compromise had been reached regarding German schooling. However, it was
too late to quiet the discontent among the younger generation. Disillusioned by their
economic and political condition and the setbacks they had suffered during the previous
decade, the younger Swabians were increasingly susceptible to Pan-German rhetoric.
By the mid 1930s the Volksgruppe experienced an internal crisis. The younger generation,
which came to be known as the Erneuerer (renewers), wanted allegiance to the Reich.
The older generations had been raised under the Austro-Hungarian Empire and saw a
political allegiance with Germany as dangerous. By 1938 this split made unified political
actions impossible. The two factions attempted a reconciliation but the rift widened
once Nazi ideology infiltrated the Kulturbund and NSDAP organizations took over at
the beginning of the war. The Erneuerer were encouraged by the annexation of Austria
and pushed the older generation aside.

Initially the younger generation had reacted in response to their deteriorating conditions
but their activities increasingly invited reprisals. Through their anti-Yugoslav attitudes
they gave the Yugoslav state an excuse to take further discrimination measures. Actions
that had been an effect now became cause for future actions. "Ultimately there formed
a vicious circle of hopelessly alienated relationships with the host country, in an
age already explosive with both revolutionary new isms and reactionary intolerance."

While about one third of the Danube Swabians embraced Nazi ideology, the rhetoric
of German superiority was not uniformly accepted. The churches in the Vojvodina resisted
because the Nazis' exclusionary rhetoric could not be reconciled with their theology.
Pastors held sermons in which they denounced race-hatred as anti-Christian. Catholics
were frequently the target of Nazi hate-rhetoric and consequently some of them were
particularly outspoken. Adam Berenz, a Catholic clergyman, published the newspaper
Die Donau (the Danube) from 1934 until its publication was halted by the Hungarian
government in 1944. During this decade Berenz wrote over eighty articles against race-ideological
propaganda and the activities of the Erneuerer (renewers) who were aligned with the
Nazis. The literature of resistance is thus part of the historiography and suggests
that the doctrines emanating from the Reich did not go unchallenged.

Some of these attitudes of racial superiority made their way East, especially when
party officials traveled to the German enclaves in the Vojvodina in an effort to establish
and promote party organizations. It has been noted that during the 1930s there was
an increased presence of representatives from Germany in the Vojvodina. Often these
officials were invited to festivities such as the anniversary of the founding of a
particular village. In the 1930s, many communities that had been established during
the 1780s, celebrated their 150th anniversary and invited Germans from the Reich to
join in the celebration. German functionaries thus did become more visible in these
communities. Marching bands paraded down main street and the Danube Swabians celebrated
their success not with their Serb and Magyar neighbors but with non-resident Germans.
This could not have been a reassuring sight for Serbs who at the same time were subjected
to increasing Panslav rhetoric. Johannes Weidenheim, a Danube Swabian from the Batschka,
reflected on these practices and concluded that this growing presence of Germany was
disturbing the balance in the villages and was sowing nasty seeds of animosity. This
increased Nazi presence intensified tensions with Slavic and Hungarian neighbors who
watched the intrusion with suspicion. Coexistence in multi-ethnic communities was
thus effectively undermined by Germans from the Reich.

On the eve of World War II the party had a significant hold on the region. After the
German army occupied Yugoslavia in 1941, Berlin upstepped nazification efforts. The
Swabian leadership in Croatia and Serbia were now one hundred percent Nazi and they
received orders directly from Berlin. The Swabians were reorganized "along the Nazi
patterns of the Reich, complete with Arbeitsdienst (Labor Service), Frauenschaften
(Women's Division), Deutsche Jugend (German Youth, that is Hitler Youth) and all the
rest of the customary Nazi formulae." Germans also received orders to report to the
Waffen-SS for military duty.

The Danube Swabians ultimately sided with the German occupiers instead of the Serb
partisan resisters and this allegiance in the end turned out fatal. As Paikert has
pointed out, the Danube Swabians had lived in the region for two hundred years, first
under Austrian and then under Hungarian rule. They had been under Yugoslav sovereignty
for only two decades and had legitimate grievances against that state for violating
their minority rights which had been granted under the Convention on Minorities Rights
by international, binding agreements. "To expect the Swabians to side with Yugoslavia
against their German brethren would be to expect too much, even if Nazi indoctrination
and propaganda had not been as intensive as they were by that time." That of course
is not to excuse any atrocities that took place during the war, of which all sides
are apparently guilty.

During German occupation the Serbs resorted to guerrilla warfare. By 1944 the tide
turned and Tito's Partisans regained control over Yugoslavia. On November 21, 1944
Tito's AVNOJ (Anti-Fascist Council of the Yugoslav People's Liberation) declared all
Germans as stateless and outlaws, stripping them of citizenship and confiscating their
property. The liquidation of Yugoslavia's German minority was complete. For Tito it
was of no consequence what the political background of the individuals were, if they
were ultra-Nazis or apolitical persons. With one stroke he rid the state of a potentially
formidable bourgeois class, repatriated the most fertile land and the most valuable
properties. Because many Swabians had been compromised during the occupation, he had
popular support.

Since most of the German men had already been drafted, the majority of Swabians who
bore the brunt of these measures were women, children and the elderly. Those who could
not leave on time were interned in concentration camps. "In Rudolfgrad along, of the
33,000 Swabian internees almost 10,000, including women and children, that is nearly
one-third, died between October 1945 and March 1948." Thousands of interns were shipped
to the Soviet Union for forced labor. Until the concentration camps in Yugoslavia
were dissolved, nearly 70,000 Swabians died. Another 28,000 died as a result of the
war, which brings the total for Swabians in Yugoslavia to 98,000 roughly 20 percent
of the population. These losses left deep scars on the psyches of the survivors.

The Danube Swabians were, of course, not the only victims of the war; they were but
one of many expellee groups. At the end of the war Germans from all over eastern Europe,
including Russia and Poland, fled before the encroaching Russian army. The suffering
was immense for millions of Europeans and life would not regain a semblance of normalcy
for several more years. These dramatic experiences also impacted the scholarship.

After World War II the study of Germans from eastern and southeastern Europe diversified
significantly and extended beyond academia. The trends of the main stream scholarship
has been discussed earlier. However, the literature that has been published by the
expellees themselves has a sub-current of its own. By this time nearly fifteen million
Germans had become expellees and much of the literature centers around these formidable
experiences. In the case of the Danube Swabians, West-German government agencies and
Danube Swabian organizations have extensively documented the atrocities Tito's Partisans
committed against the German minority in Yugoslavia. In a four volume series of several
thousand pages about 80% of the Danube Swabians are accounted for, including information
about where, when and how they died as well as who the survivors were and where they
relocated to. The series also contains recollections from survivors.

Many of these publications were partly financed by the state, partly by the various
local organizations and several were exclusively financed by the individual authors.
After the war it seemed most pressing to compile as much information as fast as possible,
consequently there was little discourse on how the historical and anthropological
disciplines may be restructured or how the collected data ought to be analyzed. Some
of the works published in the 1950s are hauntingly reminiscent of the attitudes prevalent
during the 1930s.

The majority of the expellee leadership in the immediate post-war years was markedly
conservative. In the 1950s the West German government under Adenauer made efforts
to unite the various expellee organizations under one umbrella organization. Theodor
Oberländer, who headed the ministry for the expellees (Bundesvertriebenenministerium),
had a strong fascist past and had been a member of the Nazi party. This ministry supported
expellee organizations and their publications which were quite influential in the
decade following the war. By 1958 expellee organizations published over 350 periodicals
and became an important expression of post-war culture. Expellees made significant
financial contributions to these organizations as long as they had hope of returning
to their former homes. In the early years they even had their own party, the BHE (Block
der Heimatvertriebenen und Entrechteten), which had notable support during the early
1950s. Their aim was to secure equal citizen rights for ethnic Germans, a fair distribution
of the war burden and full integration of ethnic Germans into Germany and Europe.
By the early 1960s most of them had resigned themselves to the fact that they would
not be able to return and at that point few even desired to give up the material security
they had found in Germany. Consequently expellee publications dropped.

The fact that the government would appoint a former Nazi to coordinate refugee organizations
and that in the decade following the war much of the popular literature remained conservative
is indicative of a larger phenomenon. While there was much confusion and considerable
soul-searching in the postwar years, there was also a lot of continuation. Coming
to terms with Germany's recent past was difficult and for many people the most important
thing was to get through the initial pain and get on with life. Some were not ready
or willing to acknowledge Germany's responsibility for the war and continued to look
for the blame elsewhere.

For example, Josef Senz, a survivor and chairman of the work study group of Danube
Swabian teachers, showed unambiguous antagonism against Hungarians and Slavs. In his
book Die Donauschwaben und ihre Nachbarn (Freilassing, 1959), Senz did not reflect
on the Nazis' involvement in the war nor did he consider that ethnic groups in southeastern
Europe hated Germans because of what Germany had done during the war. Instead he was
puzzled about where the hatred of Germans was coming from and characterized the Magyars
as driven by a fear based on delusion (aus irrigen Wahnvorstellungen zehrenden Angst).
For Senz nationalism was always brought on by others and by weaving in religious themes
he further removed himself from accountability. In this case the focus on the self
and the lack of reflection about Germany's guilt was a national trend that also resonates
in the literature on ethnicity. Senz was extreme in some of his early writings and
does not reflect the general tone of the scholarship but it is noteworthy that his
work was not edited before publication. In his later works Senz carried a much more
conciliatory tone.

Other authors were considerably more empathetic in trying to understand the point
of view of the other ethnic groups. Johann Weidenheim saw cultural differences without
designating national superiority or inferiority to either group. In his book Die Donauschwaben--Bild
eines Kolonistenvolkes which he co-authored with A. K. Gauß in 1961, he represents
German contribution without overemphasizing it. Weidenheim thus seems to be kin to
those who were willing to abandon a German-centric vision for a pan-European one.
Weidenheim was not alone in these efforts to overcome the estrangement between Germans
and their eastern neighbors.

A desire for conciliation was apparent as early as 1950 when the representatives of
the expellees formulated the expellee charter (Charta der deutschen Heimatvertriebenen).
In this charter, they renounced any efforts of revenge or retaliation. This highly
publicized political statement was widely recognized as the first of its kind in West
Germany. "The Charta was the first important document of peace in the history of the
Federal Republic of Germany." It again reflects the pan-European tendencies that were
also evident in the academic writings at that time.

Germany's efforts to come to terms with its past and to redefine its role in Europe
have also found expression in recent books about the Danube Swabians. For example,
the exhibition catalog Die Donauschwaben: Deutsche Siedlung in Südosteuropa published
by the Innenministerium (department of the interior) in Baden-Württemberg makes use
of several statistics and stresses that cooperation among these multi-ethnic communities
used to be the norm. As Konrad G. Gündisch states in the introduction, the purpose
of the book was to show the suffering and achievements of the Danube Swabians but
also to document the coexistence with other communities in order to "contribute to
an appreciation of a common European history and the understanding between the nations
of the East and West."

In retrospect, the postwar scholarship has been diverse and includes a wide range
of approaches, from statistical analysis and demographics to diary accounts of survivors.
Some of this literature, including numerous recollections published by the authors
themselves, clearly exists outside of mainstream academia. Nonetheless some generalizations
can be inferred from this multiplicity. German history and historiography in the twentieth
century cannot be separated from the cataclysmic events of the two world wars. After
World War I some historians tried to move away from the historicist tradition and
sought new meaning in the ethnic nation. The underlying völkisch ideology in turn
was utilized for political and expansionist purposes. The consequences were disastrous
and after World War II scholars again made an effort to distance themselves from the
troublesome paradigm. Yet while some of these major trends are evident, older currents
and undercurrents remained and existed simultaneously. Scholars simply could not wipe
the slate entirely clean. They continued to fall back on older methodologies, even
though they altered them and made them more suitable for the times. Thus in the postwar
historiography conservative elements were retained while some innovative elements
were incorporated. The desire to once again be a part of the European community, necessitated
a change of focus and this turn away from a national agenda was also reflected in
the expellee literature.

In recent years efforts have been made to overcome national identities and prepare
Europeans for a truly European Community. This has proven difficult; indeed there
seems to be evidence that many Europeans cling all the more tenaciously to regional
identities. Even as some have declared that the era of the nation-state is over, it
is not clear that internationalism can take its place. Ethnicity as a means of group
identification is likely to remain important at least in the immediate future. This
of course lends itself to be used by those who seek to consolidate political or territorial
power. Even today ethnic identity is being mobilized for nationalistic purposes in
Europe. The recent civil war in Yugoslavia stands as a stark reminder that this chapter
is not yet concluded. It also shows that history is still being manipulated to serve
political or territorial ambitions. As such historians are not merely passive observers
who record the history of their people. Instead they actively participate in the making
of that history, and they do so in more ways than one.

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